Horne Tooke Memorial 

St.Maryjs Church, Eating 




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MEMORIAL TO JOHN HORNE TOOKE 
UNVEILED BY THE NEW ENGLAND 
SOCIETY OF BROOKLYN, N. Y., IN ST. 
MARY'S CHURCH, EALING, ENGLAND, 
JUNE 17, 1919, WITH INTRODUCTORY 
STATEMENT, ADDRESSES AND PRESS 
REPORTS COMPILED BY 
HARRINGTON PUTNAM 



The New England Society of Brooklyn 
June, 1920 




JOHN HORNE TOOKE 



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THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY OF BROOKLYN 

INTRODUCTION 

TD this Society all associations with Lexington Green and Concord 
A Bridge on April iq, 1775, are forever sacred. We would not forget, 
however, the sympathy from London for this bold stand for the rights 
o( Englishmen in her colonies, a fellow-feeling which has not before been 
sufficiently recognized in this country. 

The generous subscription to the Lexington victims had been over- 
looked, perhaps, because of the hostilities that ensued. But the event 
was specially significant. The expression of pity and aid for these first 
victims came from a representative body of believers in liberty, who 
were known in London as the "Constitutional Society." 

Even before the conflict at Lexington, and as early as April 10, 1775, 
the corporation of the City of London drew up a petition praying for 
the removal of Lord North and his cabinet "for their iniquitous measures" 
with respect to their fellow-subjects in America. The Lord Mayor led 
a civic procession to St. James to present this officially. In response 
King George the Third said that "he was struck with astonishment that 
any part of his subjects should encourage the rebellious disposition which 
prevailed in some of his colonies." * 

The news of the encounter at Lexington did not make hopeless the 
wish for a constitutional adjustment. Many English still looked for con- 
ciliatory action by the British Government. An account of the engage- 
ment was prepared and forwarded to England by a committee appointed 
by the Provincial Congress in which a narrative, in terms studiously 
moderate, was given of the conflict. Capt. Derby of Salem was sent in a 
special vessel to deliver the paper into the hands of the London agent of 
Massachusetts. It was, however, later (about May iq) that the facts 
appeared in the public prints of London, setting forth the extent of the 
battle and the serious British losses in the retreat, so grave as almost 
to make vain any hope thereafter of a peaceful reconciliation. Neverthe- 
less Rev. John Home (as his name then was) was moved to take public 
action toward reconciliation with the American colonies. The touching 
raising of £100 at King's Arms Tavern, Cornhill, with Home's publica- 
tion of this subscription, made a stir throughout London. 

On July 14th there appeared in the London Press a second notification 
from Parson Home, that he had paid to Messrs. Brownes and Collison. 
on account of Dr. Franklin, the sum of £50 from the moneys raised, "for 
the relief of the widows, orphans or aged parents of our beloved American 
fellow-subjects" — with a repeated reference to the affair at Lexington. 

On the next day, July 15, 1775, another and a more pressing appeal 
came to the King from the Corporation of the City of London, represented 
by the Lord Mayor, some of the Aldermen, the Sheriff and Commons of 
the City, to remonstrate at the grievous plight of their fellow-subjects 
in America. The address read by the Recorder to the King, stated: 
"The characteristic of the people, S;re, over whom you reign, has ever 
been equally remarked by an unparalleled loyalty to their sovereign, whilst 
the principles of the constitution have been the rule of his government, 
as well as a firm opposition whenever their rights have been invaded. 
Your American subjects, Royal Sir, descend from the same ancestors 

* Blcackley, Life of Wilkes, London, 19 17, p. 291 . 



Born 1739 Died 1812 

3ltt fUemonj of 

JOHN HORNE TOOKE 

Whose body was interred in the adjacent churchyard 



AS A RECOGNITION OF HIS ACTIONS IN RAISING A 
FUND FOR WIDOWS AND ORPHANS OF AMERICAN 
SOLDIERS KILLED ON APRIL 19, 1775, AT LEXINGTON 
AND CONCORD, MASSACHUSETTS, AT THE OUTBREAK 
OF THE STRUGGLE FOR AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE 
AND FURTHER TO COMMEMORATE THE ALLIANCE 
IN 1917 OF AMERICAN AND BRITISH ARMS IN A 
WAR FOR FREEDOM AND THE RIGHT OF ALL 
NATIONS TO SELF GOVERNMENT. 

Erected by the 

NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

OF BROOKLYN, NEW YORK 

1919 



with ourselves, appear equally jealous of the prerogatives of freemen, 
without which they cannot deem themselves happy." * 

The seven years' struggles of the American Revolution inevitably 
clouded the recollection of these acts of friendship and sympathy. 

Home was tried for criminal libel before Lord Mansfield and a jury in 
i — The trial brought out an interesting affidavit from Captain 
Edward Thornton Gould of the Fourth Regiment of foot, who had been 
taken prisoner at the attack on Concord Bridge. The affidavit concluded 
with the statement that deponent was "now treated with the greatest 
humanity and taken all possible care of by the provincials of Medford." 
(Rex v. Home, Cowper Rep. 672, 678.) It appears that this Captain 
Gould eloped with the daughter of the Earl of Essex, and the pair riding 
over the border, were married by the blacksmith of Gretna Green! 
(Rogers, Sherwood Forest, pp. 203, 204.) The Home trial also raised nice 
points in the law of criminal libel, so that Lord Mansfield remarked of 
Thurlow's formal information against Home: "I fancy the Attorney 
General was surprised with the objection." 

In the end, however, Home was fined £200, with a year's imprison- 
ment, which conviction was affirmed on appeal. 

In the Hancock House at Lexington appears, over the fireplace, a 
tablet commemorating this donation to the Lexington sufferers. An 
account of the Home benefaction by Rev. C. A. Staples is found in 
volume 4 of the Proceedings of the Lexington Historical Society. 

It is now recognized as a historical fact that at the date of the battle 
of Lexington the people of the City of London, as distinguished from the 
Tory landowning class, favored the American colonies. + Indeed, Sir 
George Otto Trevelyan, in his American Revolution, maintains that the 
majority of Englishmen then had an attitude of friendship to the colonies, 
and were opposed to North's coercive measures. 

The entry into the great European War in which this country was taking 
up arms alongside the forces of the mother country, seemed a fitting 
occasion to commemorate this sympathy from London for Lexington in 
her first struggle. 

The New England Society in the City of Brooklyn, in 1917, voted to 
acknowledge this courageous liberality of a benefactor, who had suffered 
so much for his sentiments. 

Through the kind and most indefatigable efforts of Mr. Henry J. 
Brown, long the partner of the late Benjamin Franklin Stevens, and now 
Stevens' successor in London, the data was obtained of Home Tooke's 
death and burial in the churchyard of St. Mary's Parish Church in Ealing. 
Although suburban to London, being nine miles west of St. Paul's, 
Ealing is a separate residential municipality of Middlesex County. 

After the appointment of Ambassador Davis this memorial was made 
the subject of the following letter from President Boody of the New 
England Society: 



* Treloar. Wilkes and the City of London, 1917 (p. 168). 

t Yet even among the landed aristocracy were many supporters of the Americans Few, however, were 
so'out spoken as Thomas Coke, first Earl of Leicester of Holkam, a descendant of the Lord Chief Justice 
under King James He did not scruple to say boldly: "Every night during the American war. did I drink 
the health of Ceneral Washington as the greatest man on earth." Stirling, Life of Coke of Norfolk, p 117. 
ed . 1 1 1 . 

10 



December 28, iqiS 
Hon. John \V. Davis, Ambassador London: 

Dear Sir — The New England Society of Brooklyn has voted to acknowl- 
edge a contribution in 1775 from London to the widows and orphans of 
those killed at the Battle of Lexington, by erecting a memorial to Home 
Tooke, who at a public meeting in June, 1775, took up subscriptions to 
the amount of £100. By leave of the church authorities we have restored 
his tomb in the churchyard of St. Mary's Church at Ealing. 

Our society has voted to donate to the British Orphans Fund £100, 
as a return of that generous gift then made from London. Mr. Henry 
J . Brown (of the London house of B. F. Stevens & Brown), has energetic- 
ally taken up the matter with the Rev. C. J. Sharp, Vicar of Ealing. 
Mr. Newton Crane of our London Embassy, who had been active in the 
Franklin tablet, commissioned the artist to design for us a portrait 
tablet. Such preparations are completed that the unveiling can be now 
had. 

May I, on behalf of our society, formally ask that you will speak for 
us at this coming occasion? We should be further honored if, through 
your personal influence, Mr. Asquith or some English speaker like him, 
could be induced to participate as representing the present view of 
London both of the national entente and regarding the past differences 
that led to our Revolution. 

Our society intended by such a function to recall the fact that the 
liberal minded of London then sympathized with those killed^at Lexington . 

The tablet within the church is to have this legend: 

(The inscription was then quoted.) 

Your predecessor, Dr. Page, had interested himself in this proposed 
unveiling, and we believe, had his health permitted, was prepared to 
officiate in the final ceremony. We therefore hope that from your many 
engagements you can spare time to make the address on behalf of our 
society and thereby give effect to our efforts to recall London's generosity 
to the earliest victims in our own struggles for liberty. If you communi- 
cate with Mr. Brown of B. F. Stevens & Brown, he will give you details 
and arrange for a date to suit your convenience. I am, dear Mr. Davis, 
with great respect, 

Yours obediently, 

DAVID A. BOODY, President. 

Rev. C.J. Sharp, Vicar of St. Mary's, responded to our suggestion of a 
memorial; permission therefor was voted by the Church Vestry, which 
was followed by a "faculty" for such a tablet granted by the bishop of 
London. Home Tooke's remains were in a flat altar tomb, surrounded 
by iron railings that after a century were in some disrepair. The restora- 
tion of this the New England Society also undertook. In the church was 
erected a memorial bronze tablet, set in a frame of gray marble, designed 
by Lieutenant L. F. Roslyn of the Royal Air Force, who is also one of 
the Royal Society of British Sculptors. At the top is an artistic medallion 
head from Home Tooke's portrait in the National Portrait Gallery. 

11 



The American Ambassador entered with interest into the arrangements 
for the unveiling ceremony. Ealing being a rural suburb, the middle of 
June was proposed in the hope for favorable weather. Eventually the 
seventeenth of June, iqiq, was fixed upon, however, without any inten- 
tion to mark the anniversary of Bunker Hill! After the Ambassador had 
prepared his address, he was prevented from attending.* In this situa- 
tion, when the invitations had been sent, Consul General Skinner was 
impressed into service, as he kindly consented to read the Ambassador's 
address. 

The Society was most fortunate in the presence of Right Honorable 
Augustine Birrell, who expressed the thanks of Great Britain. On the 
printed program was next an address by the Mayor of Ealing. 

The Directors of the New England Society, however, had voted to 
donate a check for £100 for the local war orphans. But on account of 
delay of mails this had not been disclosed in advance. The presentation 
of this sum came as a surprise, so that its unexpectedness proved a happy 
climax to the church ceremonies. 

Mr. Lafayette H. de Friese, an American lawyer, resident in London, 
kindly acted for the Society in making this presentation. His brief 
address was most favorably received. 

A personal letter written June iqth, said: "The service itself was 
most inspiring. Many of the school children of Ealing were in the galleries 
of the church, and as they had been trained to sing the hymns, the 
singing was uplifting and thrilling. The body of the church was practi- 
cally full . The Mayor and Corporation attended in their robes, and quite 
a number of leading Americans were present." 

After the exercises within the church, and the procession to the church- 
yard, there was a lawn party at the Vicarage, at which some three hun- 
dred people were present. The weather proved as fine as a June day in 
America. 

Appended is also the formal acknowledgment to the Society from the 
Ealing officials. 

The speech by the brilliant author of Obiter Dicta unfortunately was 
not reported. In an application for a copy, Mr. Birrell sent a clipping 
from the Morning Post\ which is printed on page 22. 

If we have any regrets it must be that the Society has missed a single 
word from the gifted essayist, author and orator whom, as a speaker, 
Sir Frank Newbolt ranks as "facile princess" adding, of Birrell, "His 
heaven-sent gift is that he never says anything dull, even in a law 
lecture." (The Nineteenth Century, August, iqi8, p. 257.) 



* Mr Davis had been honored bv an invitation to luncheon at Ascot by the Kins — which was equiva- 
'ent to a command 

* Mr. Birrell on Scptemocr 12. iqiq, wrote tnus. 

"I he only record I have of the I lorne Tooke memorial is the enclosed cutting from the Morning Po* 
[see page 22] and apart from it I can recall nothing of what I said, excent the recollection that it was worth 
nothing 

"On the other hand, the American Ambassador's Address was very interesting. The cheque incide 
*a>- most dramatic, unexpected, and moving I advise you to cut my observations down to one line 
rhank vou for the Landmark The best sketch of Home Tooke is to be found in Hazlitt's "Spinr of th« 

Yours most sincerely 

Augustine Birrell 

12 



Announcement of the Unveiling 




THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING UNION 

Presidents 

AMERICAN: The Hon. W. H. TAFT. 

BRITISH: The Right Hon. A. J. BALFOUR. O. M. 

The American Ambassador will unveil on Tuesday, June 17th, at 
3.30 p. m., the Memorial Tablet which has been erected in St. Mary's 
Parish Church, Ealing, by the New England Society of Brooklyn, N. Y., 
in memory of John Home Tooke (whose tomb in the adjacent churchyard 
has also been repaired) in recognition of his actions in raising a fund for 
widows and orphans of American soldiers killed on April 10th, 1775, at 
Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts, at the outbreak of the Struggle 
for American Independence, and, further, to commemorate the Alliance 
in 1Q17 of American and British Arms in a war for freedom and the right 
of all nations to self-government. 

The Right Hon. Augustine Birrell will move a vote of thanks to the 
Ambassador and acknowledge on behalf of Great Britain this expression 
of international goodwill. 

It is hoped that as many members as possible will attend the ceremony. 
St. Mary's Church, Ealing, is situated between Ealing Broadway and 
South Ealing (Hounslow Line) Stations on the District Railway. Motor 
omnibuses from both stations pass the church. 



G. MILLS McKAY 
Hon. Organizing Secretary 
June bth, 1919 



13 




Consul General Hon. ROBERT P. SKINNER 



Programme 
EALING PARISH CHURCH 

UNVEILING OF MEMORIAL 

— TO — 

JOHN HORNE TOOKE 
On TUESDAY, JUNE 17th, igiq, at 3.30 p. m. 

ORDER OF SERVICE 

Opening Hymn: 

Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory of the Coming of the Lord 

Julia Ward Howe 

Prayer by Rev. W. Garrett Horder. 

Statement by the Vicar. 

The Unveiling of the Memorial and Address by the Ambassador. 

The Right Hon. Augustine Birrell will thank the Ambassador on behalf 
of Great Britain. 

The Mayor will thank the Ambassador on behalf of the Borough of 
Ealing. 

Hymn: 

My Country, Tis of Thee 

Samuel Francis Smith 

The Rural Dean will pronounce the Benediction. 

A Procession will be formed to visit the Grave; meanwhile the following 
Hymn will be sung: 

Once to Every Man and Nation. 

/ . Russell Lowell 

C. J. SHARP, Vicar of Ealing 

yr' j< u/HITF [Ch urcnwar dens of St. Mary's, Ealing 

\jj p pqt TVfn (Churchwardens of All Saints, Ealing 
J. S. KING, Mayor of Ealing 



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Risht Honorable AUGUSTINE BIRRELL 



ADDRESS OF REV. C. J. SHARP. 

The Vicar explained that John Home was a parson of Brentford, where 
his elder brother was a market gardener. He was a character, this parson, 
but like many other characters not exactly a man of peace. He made 
many enemies, and a good many friends, from one of whom he derived 
his last name. Since his death the number of his friends had increased, 
and they were now numerous in America. He was a learned philologist, 
a pioneer of the science. He was one of the last parsons to sit as a parson 
in the House of Commons. In his own estimation he had long ceased to 
be a parson, but the law of that time was that once a parson always a 
parson; and although there were other parsons in the House of Commons, 
the arrival there of Home Tooke was the signal for action which resulted 
in the imposition of clerical disabilities still in force. The Vicar explained 
that in his opinion that sort of action was the wrong way to fight clerical- 
ism; the right way was to insist that parsons were men, and to allow 
them to take part in the government of their town and country. Home 
Tooke had also tried to become a lawyer, but the lawyers would not have 
him, although he was unusually well qualified for the profession, and 
more than once gained notable triumphs by his legal knowledge. But all 
this was domestic business. The Americans were not commemorating 
Home Tooke because of his learning or his combats with the legal pro- 
fession and the House of Commons. They were doing honor to his mem- 
ory because that he, living in the old country, sympathized with the 
colonial point of view. They also desired to record the passing away of 
old feuds between parents and their offspring, and to help to cement the 
alliance between Great Britain and the United States, which, recruited 
from many countries, has now become the greatest of all the free com- 
munities. 

In conclusion, the Vicar referred to Home Tooke's mixed character, 
saying that most of us had a mixture of good and bad in us, although 
some were more harmoniously blended than others. He reminded the 
audience of Wordsworth's words, written in recollection of the grave of 
Robert Burns: 

"The best of what we do and are, 
Just God, forgive!'* 

ADDRESS OF AMBASSADOR DAVIS. 

Read by Consul General Robert P. Skinner 

By this modest tablet and this simple ceremonial the New England 
Society of Brooklyn, and we who are here assembled, pay tribute to the 
memory of a man long since dead who played no inconspicuous part in 
the activities of his time. His long life of seventy-seven years was one 
of incessant activity during which he addressed himself in turn to the- 
ology, medicine, law, agriculture, linguistics and statecraft. With a 
love of combat and a genius for controversy he passed from one conflict 
to another, and challenged in turn the courts, the parliament, and even 
the Crown itself. So fierce were the controversies in which he engaged 
and so ruthless was he when the fight was on that his enemies were always 
more powerful than his friends and successfully prevented not only his 

2 17 



attainment of any high public office, but even his admission as a private 
citizen to the practice of the law. Twice he was convicted for criminal 
libel, once burnt in effigy in the City of London, twice defeated as a can- 
didate for the House of Commons and when finally elected to that body 
disqualified by special act because of his former membership in the 
clergy. Finally tried for treason and triumphantly acquitted, he achieved 
the rare distinction of dividing all who knew him into two distinct classes 
as friends or enemies — equally zealous no matter to which class they 
might belong. 

But those who erect this Tablet to his memory have seen fit to pass 
over many great events in which he bore a part, and have chosen to 
preserve in lasting brass his action in collecting funds for the relief of 
certain widows and orphans suddenly bereft of their natural protectors. 
It was a generous and a kindly thing to do, and yet many men have done 
as much and have received no more than a passing notice; and many acts 
of greater merit in point of charity alone have no record save in the great 
book of final remembrance. What is it then that sets this deed apart 
from others of its kind and makes this gathering of British and Americans 
today a fit and proper thing? 

For the answer to this question we must look back through the vista 
of 144 years to the iqth day of April, 1775, when at Lexington and 
Concord the smouldering passion and resentment of the Colonists of 
Massachusetts burst into open flame. It was the opening gun of a Civil 
War destined to last for eight long years; not the first, nor unhappily 
the last conflict of that kind, to occur among men of English speech. It 
was a war which was to divide families, to separate men in thought and 
feeling from their neighbors, to sunder the political tie between the old 
and the new and to change the course of the world more perhaps than 
even now we know. In such wars there can be no neutrals. In the time 
of the Roses, all England was either York or Lancaster. In the days of 
the Commonwealth, man could be only Puritan or Cavalier. In the great 
Revolution, men were either Whig or Jacobite; and when the war of 
American Independence came on there was a sharp cleavage, both in 
England and in America, between those who were for and those who 
were against the Colonies. 

For Home Tooke neutrality on any subject was impossible, least of all 
in a controversy of this character. He himself declared that he had 
entered into an engagement shortly after he was born, "To oppose by all 
the means in my power oppression and tyranny in whatever shape they 
present themselves." And when the guns rang out in April, 1775, his 
choice was already made. Four years earlier he had organized his 
"Society for Supporting the Bill of Rights," and among the instructions 
which he prepared for candidates whom that Society would endorse was 
one directing the candidates "To endeavor to restore to America the 
essential right of taxation by representatives of their own free election; 
repealing the Acts passed in violation of that right since the year 1763 
and the universal excise so notoriously incompatible with every principle 
of British liberty which has been lately substituted in the Colonies for 
the laws of customs." It was but natural, therefore, that when the 
"Society for Supporting the Bill of Rights" had been succeeded by one 

18 



which was called "The Society for Constitutional Information," that the 
latter should at the King's Arms Tavern, Cornhill, 1775, take under the 
guidance of Home Tooke the action which this Tablet is intended to com- 
memorate. Let me read the record of that days proceedings: 

"King's Arms Tavern, Cornhill 

June 7, 1775 
"At a special meeting, this day, of several members of the Constitutional Society* 
during an adjournment, a gentleman proposed that a subscription should be immediately 
entered into (by such of the members present who might approve the purpose), for 
raising the sum of one hundred pounds, to be applied to the relief of the widows, orphans, 
and aged parents, of our beloved American fellow-subjects, who, faithful to the character 
of Englishmen, preferring death to slavery, were, for that reason only, inhumanly 
murdered by the King's troops at or near Lexington and Concord, in the province of 
Massachusetts, on the 18th of last April; which sum being immediately collected, it 
was thereupon resolved, 'That Mr. Home do pay to-morrow, into the hands of Messrs. 
Brownes and Collinson, on account of Dr. Franklin, the said sum of one hundred 
pounds; and that Dr. Franklin be requested to apply the same to the above-mentioned 
purpose." 

JOHN HORNE." 

Others who were present hesitated to sign a Resolution couched in such 
terms, but Tooke seized the pen and wrote his proper name — John Home 
— in token of his willingness and desire to assume full responsibility. 

For the bitter language which was used in this Resolution and which 
was afterwards published by Tooke, with reference to the King's troops, 
he was arrested, tried and convicted for libel, serving a term of twelve 
months imprisonment and sacrificing a considerable portion of his meager 
fortune. But in the sentiments which he entertained towards his "beloved 
American fellow-subjects" he stands at the bar of history in the respec- 
table company of Lord Chatham, William Pitt, Charles James Fox, 
Edmund Burke, Lords Shelburne, Richmond, Rockingham, Savile and 
other great Englishmen of the day who voiced in vain the thoughts and 
feelings of the majority of their countrymen. 

And now this Tablet, having invited us to dwell upon the past, calls 
us back again into the living present. It reminds us that out of the 
events in which Home Tooke participated there arose in the Western 
Hemisphere a great and independent nation formed of federated common- 
wealths, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the truth that all men are 
born free and equal. And as it has grown and prospered through the 
years, so also there has grown and prospered a chain of free common- 
wealths, so conceived and dedicated, circling the globe with English 
speech and Anglo-Saxon freedom. For the guns that were fired at Con- 
cord and Lexington woke to life not only the federal union of the United 
States of America but echoing down the corridors of the future they called 
into being the great self-governing Dominions of the British Empire. 
And today when each has learned to put in practice the lessons of the past, 
with civil strife forgotten and old dissensions healed, Great Britain and 
America make common cause against those who would assail the heritage 
of freedom which they have received. 

Let us in this presence thank God with reverence for the victory their 
arms have won, and let us thank Him also that through all the changing 
years the cause of liberty, whether in Great Britain or America, has 
never lacked its champion. 

19 




Mr. LAFAYETTE H. Dc FRIESE 



ADDRESS OF MR. LAFAYETTE H. DE FRIES. 

My principal duty here today is, as the representative of the New Eng- 
land Society of Brooklyn, to present a cheque for £100 to be used for the 
aid of widows and orphans caused by the great War which we have just 
been through. Nearly a century and a half ago John Home, in whose 
memory the Tablet in St. Mary's Church has just been erected, collected 
the sum of £100 and sent it through Benjamin Franklin to be applied, 
in his own language, "To the relief of the widows, orphans and aged par- 
ents of our beloved American fellow-subjects who, faithful to the character 
of Englishmen, preferring death to slavery, were for that reason only 
inhumanly murdered by the King's troops at or near Lexington and Con- 
cord in the province of Massachusetts Bay, in New England, in America." 
For this action John Home was tried as a traitor and acquitted, but he 
was also tried for libel and convicted and punished. 

The New England Society of Brooklyn now returns this money to be 
used for the benefit of widows and orphans of the present War. The 
instructions sent with it are that I should hand the draft, at the time of 
unveiling, to Ambassador Davis, to be handed over by him to such 
charity as he and I think most in need of funds for the aid of widows and 
orphans created by the great War. As the cheque has just arrived and 
the engagements of the Ambassador are such that I have not been able 
to confer with him I think it best to hand the cheque to the Rector of this 
Church, which I now do, to be devoted to the purpose for which the funds 
were sent. 

I cannot leave without adding a word to the noble address in whose 
terms the memorial tablet has been dedicated. The occasion to me is 
inexpressibly tender and appealing. Nearly 150 years ago this man, not 
a great statesman, but a man of the people, looking down through the 
long vista of years, read the coming ages more clearly than those who tried 
and convicted him. The years have come and gone and our countries, 
yours the motherland and mine her daughter, have grown closer and 
closer together until now we are ending a vast military struggle side by 
side, and at its end, we meet to honor the memory of one who nearly a 
century and a half ago sounded the depth of those principles which bind 
us together. He did not live and suffer in vain. This church, and the 
grave in which he lies, will be a shrine to which will come, long after you 
and I have gone, from thousands of miles across the seas, lovers of the 
beautiful and the good to pay their tribute to the memory of one who was 
a friend of their country in the long past. And as they look upon this 
memorial tablet and the little grave outside a tenderness for their 
motherland and her people will spring up in their breasts and new links 
of love and affection will bind the two peoples together. You and I will 
part today and go our several ways, but we shall leave behind us a church 
and a grave which can never be the same again. If it be true, as the 
tender Poet of Eastern song has sung, that the roses are a brighter and 
more glorious red which bloom over the spot where Imperial Caesar 
bled, then I think that the flowers will be sweeter and the winds blow 
more softly and the birds will sing a tenderer song over the grave where 
John Home lies in his last long sleep. 

21 



Press notices of the occasion appeared in the London dailies like the 
Times, Post, Telegraph and Standard, with full accounts in Middlesex 
weekly papers, and the monthly magazine, the Landmark, the official 
organ of the English Speaking Union. 

Appended are the notices in the Morning Post of June 18th, The London 
Graphic of June 21st (also a subsequent description from the Brooklyn 
Eagle of July 13, iqiq). 



From the Morning Post 

IN MEMORY OF HORNE TOOKE 
TABLET IN EALING CHLKCH 

A memorial tablet to John Home Tooke was unveiled in Ealing Parish Church 
yesterday afternoon. The ceremony was to have been performed by the American 
Ambassador, but in his absence his place was taken by Mr. Robert Skinner, Con- 
sul-General. The tablet, which is of bronze on a marble base, is the work of Lieutenant 
L. F. Roslyn, of the Royal Air Force. At the top is a medallion of Tooke, from the 
painting in the National Gallery, and the inscription is as follows: 

Born 1736. Died 181 2. In memory of John Home Tcoke (whose body was interred 
in the adjacent churchyard), as a recognition of his action in raising a fund for the 
widows and orphans of American soldiers killed on April iq, 1775, at Lexington and 
Concord, Massachusetts, at the outbreak of the struggle for American independence, 
and further to commemorate the Alliance in iqi 7 of American and British arms in a 
war for freedom and the right of all nations to self-government. Erected by the New 
England Society of Brooklyn and New York, iqiq. 

The vicar of Ealing, the Rev. C.J. Sharp, gave a short sketch of Home Tooke s career. 

The address by the American Ambassador was read by Mr. Robert Skinner. 

In this address the Ambassador said that by that modest tablet and simple cere- 
monial they would pay tribute to the memory of a man who played no inconspicuous 
part in the activities of his time. His long life of seventy-six years was one of incessant 
activity, during which he addressed himself in turn to theology, medicine, law, agri- 
culture, linguistics, and statecraft. With a love of combat and a genius for controversy 
he passed from one conflict to another and challenged in turn the Courts, Parliament, 
and even the Crown itself. Those who had erected the tablet had chosen to preserve 
in lasting remembrance his action in collecting funds for the relief of the widows and 
orphans of the soldiers killed at Lexington, when the smouldering passion and resent- 
ment of the Colonists of Massachusetts burst into open flame. It was the opening guns 
ot the civil war. He went on to recall the organization by Tooke of the Society for 
Supporting the Bill of Rights, and referred at length to the meeting of the Society for 
Constitutional Information at the King's Arms Tavern in Cornhill, on June 7, 1775, 
when it was decided to send £100 "to be applied to the relief of the widows and orphans 
and aged parents of our beloved American fellow-subjects who, faithful to the character 
ol Englishmen, preferring death to slavery, were for that reason only inhumanly mur- 
dered by the King's troops.'.' The language was violent, he continued, but in the senti- 
ment s which Tooke entertained he stood at the bar of history in the respectable company 
of Lord Chatham, William Pitt, Charles James Fox, Edmund Burke, and other great 
Englishmen of the day, who voiced in vain the thoughts and feelings of the majority 
of their countrymen. 

Mr. Lafayette 1 loyt dc Fricsc. President of the New England Society, on its behalf, 
presented a cheque lor I ico, in return for the money Home Tcoke sent to America, 
which, he said, was to He used for the benefit of the widows and orphans of those killed 
in the present war. 

Mr. Augustine Birrcll, in proposing a vote of thanks to the American Ambassador 
for his address, said that the L'100 returned that day was an indication of the affection 
and e^rccm which now united our race and the United States. Each spoke Chatham's 

22 



language, but it was very easy to be disagreeable in Chatham's tongue. Therefore he 
begged them on all occasions, whether with tongue or pen, to avoid not only insulting 
language, as that, he trusted, would be out of the question, but irritating language also 
Englishmen and Americans had thin skins, and they were thin in different places, so 
'hat what annoyed an American would not annoy us, and what annoyed us an American 
would pass over 

The Mayor of Baling thanked the Ambassador on behalf of the burgesses, and the 
ceremony concluded with a pilgrimage to the grave of 1 lorne Tooke in the neighbouring 
churchvard 



London Graphic, June 21, igig 

TIME AND JOHN HORNE TOOKE 

St. Mary's Parish Church, Ealing, witnessed a strange ceremony on Tuesday, when 
a tablet presented by the New England Society of Brooklyn, New York, to the memory 
of John Home Tcoke was unveiled, under the auspices of the English-speaking Union, 
by the American Ambassador, and accepted on behalf of this country by Mr. Birrell 
Tooke is remembered by scholars for his curious essay in philology, "The Diversions of 
Purley," but America loves him for having proposed the raising of a fund in England 
for the widows and orphans of American soldiers killed on April 10, 1775, at Lexington 
and Concord, Massachusetts, on the outbreak of the struggle for American independence. 
The proposal was at once kind-hearted and ill-advised, and in 1777 Tooke was brought 
before Lord Mansfield, fined £200 and imprisoned for a year. Much water has passed 
his native Westminster since that time. America has forgotten the old bitterness; hence 
this commemoration in the parish church of Ealing. 

Born in 1736, the son of a well-to-do Westminster poulterer (named Home), Tooke 
had an adventurous career. He went to Westminster, Eton and Cambridge, and took 
holy orders, but did not long remain an active minister of the Church. His excellent 
parts were appreciated by Voltaire and Sterne, and also by Wilkes, for whom he fought 
loyally until he contrived to quarrel with him. He plunged into politics, and he stood 
twice for Westminster without being returned; once he was returned for Old Sarum, 
only to be excluded after a few months by a special Act preventing clerks in holy orders 
from sitting in Parliament. Needless to say that he was always up against constituted 
authority. 

At one time he was summoned to the bar of the House of Commons for attacking the 
Speaker. At the age of fifty-eight he came into active conflict with the Government. 
He was a leader of the Corresponding Society, a body which professed sympathy with 
the revolutionary spirit in France, and when in 1794 there was panic in England, and 
the Government feared the growth of disaffection, he, together with Hardy and Thelwall 
was brought to trial on a charge of high treason, but acquitted. In 1786 he published 
"The Diversions of Purley," which brought him repute as a philologist. It is a book of 
which everyone has talked from that day to this, but few have read, though no "gentle- 
man's library" is complete without it. He was always hospitably inclined, and, being the 
happy possessor of considerable means, was able to indulge his taste by entertaining 
on a large scale at his house at Wimbledon, where came much of the best intellectual 
society of the day, from Erskine to Tom Paine. 

LEWIS MELVILLE. 



23 



From the Brooklyn Eagle 

HOW ENGLAND AND AMERICA JOIN HEARTS IN CEREMONY 
HONORING JOHN HORNE TOOKE 

Impressive Services in Ealing, England, at Unveiling of Memorial 

Tablet Presented to St. Mary's Church by New England 

Society of Brooklyn 

By EDWARD V. RMS 

Truly times change the vision and dispel old animosities, even the bitterest. The 
passage of 144 years has worked a revolution in the minds of men. In 1775 sturdy New 
England farmers, flaming of eye, hot musket in hand, faced British redcoats across the 
soft green turf of Lexington common. Who among them would have dared to dream 
that the day would come when Englishmen and Americans would clasp hands over the 
grave of an English parson who elected to champion the cause of the colonists, who raised 
£100 for the relief of the American women and children left widows and orphans by that 
fight. 

Yet over the grave of John Home Tooke, at St. Mary's Church, Ealing, in the new 
day when men have seen a light which has broadly illumined their pathway and the 
era of the brotherhood has drawn a little closer, there occurred a moving service on 
June 17 last. In this church on British soil, not far from London, a memorial tablet 
was unveiled in honor of Tooke. It was presented to the church by the New England 
Society of Brooklyn. Furthermore, the Brooklyn society performed a delicate courtesy. 
It raised a sum of the same amount as that raised by the Rev. Mr. Tooke and presented 
it to the fund for the widows, orphans and aged parents of those who fell in the great war. 
Thus the account was wiped off the slate. John Home Tooke could hardly have looked 
for a happier sequel to the story of which he wrote the first stirring chapter. 

One hundred and forty-two years ago the Rev. John Home Tooke went to prison for 
criminal libel against the King. On June 17, 19 19, in the soft mellow afternoon of an 
English churchyard, Britons and Americans lifted their voices in singing Julia Ward's 
"Battle Hymn of the Republic," which emanated from the soul of a woman who saw 
the new day dawning. They also sang "My Country, 'Tis of Thee," and after that 
"God Save the King." It was a symbol of the binding anew of the ties connecting 
the English-speaking peoples. 

English newspapers recounted the event with sympathy, and R. P. Skinner, Consul 
General of the United States, taking the place of the American Ambassador, who had 
been summoned to meet the King at Ascot, stressed this paragraph of the Ambassador's 
prepared address which was read for him: 

"The guns that were fired at Concord and Lexington woke to life not only the federal 
union of the United States of America, but, echoing down the corridors of the future, 
called into being the great self-governing dominions of the British Empire. And today, 
when each had learned to put in practice the lessons of the past with civil strife for- 
gotten and old dissensions healed, Great Britain and America made common cause 
against those who would assail the heritage of freedom which they had received." 

Aside from this the service was an inspiring one. The school children of Ealing were 
assembled in the galleries of the church. They had been especially trained to sing the 
hymns. The Mayor and Corporation attended in full robes of office. Representative 
citizens of Ealing touched elbows with leading Americans. 

The Right Hon. Augustine Birrell was present and delivered an eloquent oration, 
in which he said that henceforth England and America would stand together in the 
interests of humanity and never more draw sword, one against the other. Finally, 
James Russell Lowell's magnificent ode was sung, beginning: 

24 



Once to every man and nation 

Comes the moment to decide, 
In the strife of truth with falsehood. 

For the good or evil side; 
Some great cause, God's new Messiah, 

Offering each the bloom or blight. . 
And the choice goes by forever 

'Twixt that darkness and that light 

So in the green churchyard of Ealing with the rays of the June sun railing like a 
benediction on grass blade and clinging vine, amid the song of birds, the blood that 
stained the common of Lexington was wiped away as sons of nations once at str i le clasped 
hands in amity and peace over the grave of one who dared to stand for a principle 
And men thought that no better symbol could be desired as a herald of the dav when the 
brotherhood of man shall be the human race 







ST. MARY'S CHURCH 



25 




Procession Leaving the Church, Behind the Churchwardens are Consul General 
Skinner and Right Hon. Augustine Birrell. 




Procession at the Tomb of Home Tooke 



Acknowledgment from officials of Ealing 




Town Hall, Ealing W 

ioth July, iQiq 
Mr. Lafayette Hoyte de Friese 
Queen Anne's Mansions 

St. James's Park, S. W. 

Dear Sir: 

We desire on behalf of the Committee of the Ealing War Memorial ("The Fund of 
the Grateful Hearts"), to ask you to convey to the New England Society our sincere 
thanks for their handsome gift of £100 in memory of John Home Tooke. 

The object of the Fund of the Grateful Hearts is to ameliorate the lot of those here 
who have suffered in and through the War, and particularly to give a good start in life 
to children whose fathers have been killed or incapacitated and we hope that you will 
think it happy — as we ourselves do — that your gift arising out of that unhappy War 
which separated our peoples, should, by its application to this fund be associated with 
the War in which, fighting side by side for the common good of all mankind, they have 
achieved what we hope and pray may prove a real and lasting union. 

With renewed thanks and with the most sincere expression of esteem, 

We are, 

Yours faithfully, 

John King, Mayor 

Henry Walter Peal, Chairman of the 

Executive Committee 
John C. Fuller, Hon. Treasurer 
Leonard Bean, Hon. Secretary 



Resolution of New England Society of Brooklyn 
October 2, iqiq 

The Directors of the New England Society of Brooklyn adopt the 
following minute: 

This Society records its sense of deep appreciation of the painstaking 
help and wise advice of Mr. Henry J. Brown, of London, throughout 
the long continued preparations for the Home Tooke Memorial, set up 
on June 17th last in Ealing. His careful plans and personal intervention 
overcame our successive difficulties. He arranged that the Society's 
purpose should be completed in the presence of distinguished representa- 
tives of both countries, so that the occasion attracted wide public in- 
terest and has helped to promote international friendship. 

The Society gratefully enters this acknowledgement upon its minutes, 
and directs that a copy be sent to Mr. Brown. 

27 



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